


Venice II

by Thimblerig



Series: The Lion and the Serpent [3]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Gen, I won't lie Milady is kinda mean, Snippet FIc, The one where Aramis and Milady are girlfriends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-06
Updated: 2015-10-06
Packaged: 2018-04-25 03:28:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4945015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"Comfort him.  Console him with your gentle womanly heart."</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Venice II

Aramis shifted his grip on his beechwood oar, sculling the blade quietly through the oily black waters of the canal. He glanced up where, temporarily illuminated by a candle in a high window, a narrow, rag-eared cat scurried over a ledge. It glanced at him briefly, with eyes like phosphorescent green moons, and then disappeared into inky blackness. The woman who sat regally in the prow of the boat stared at him with eyes as green, and kept her hands shrouded in the dark folds of her wrap.

"I don't mean to be picky," Aramis said, voice pitched carefully low so as not to carry over the water, "but we're about to pass under a guard station, and our blessed cargo is... likely to attract their attention."

Wrapped in a gabardine, their cargo lay in the body of the gondola, his whimpers increasing in volume and number. Aramis couldn't exactly blame the elderly casuist, for the drowning cell from which they had extracted the poor soul was... not exactly pleasant, but felt this was not a useful time.

" _Don't_ knock him unconscious again," he added sharply, "there's a head injury already." He thought a bit and added, "and if he dies we won't get paid, however we spin the tale."

"I am aware of the terms of the deal," she said, murmuring as low, with a bite of weary exasperation. "Our good fellow seems unwilling. To listen. To reason."

"Comfort him. Console him with your gentle womanly heart."

"Have you _met_ me?" she asked.

"Do _you_ want to row?" 

For a moment it looked like the lady would climb over the body, but the craft rocked and splashed. She settled down with a sigh, twitched the deep hood over her head, and gathered the casuist up until he rested in her lap. She stroked straggles of grey hair away from the man's forehead. The weeping stopped.

Aramis let the boat drift into the shadow of a bridge as a party of pleasure-goers tumbled along the stones above them, singing about aunties and little roosters and joshing the link-boys carrying their lights. The casuist kept still, his voice held silent and his attention gripped by the subtle glint of a poniard's tip placed against his eye. 

Aramis crossed himself. "Holy Mary, Stella-maris, Mother of Small Mercies, please forgive us."

The revellers took themselves away and he leaned again into the long oar. Somewhere a cat wailed into the night.

**Author's Note:**

> Gondola ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gondola
> 
> _singing about aunties and little roosters_ \- well I know the song exists _now_ :   
> http://www.amazon.com/Cummari-Iaduzzu-Auntie-Little-Rooster/dp/B000S4EVYE but I can't swear to how old it is.
> 
> The casuist - 'casuistry' as a form of reasoning is generally used in the perjorative sense these days, but in the first book there was an acquaintance of Aramis who seemed fine being called a casuist, so here we go - a canon reference!


End file.
